A few months ago I was in a state of light sleep; that time when the body is slowly waking up, but not yet ready to rise and greet the day.
I was dreaming of something or other and then through the dream came the following words; ‘you are not a contemporary being having a contemporary experience, you are an eternal being.’
The message was delivered simply, clearly and directly.
The effect was that I immediately became aware of the ways I’d been focusing on the minor and trivial details of my life and I took some time to refocus.
Later that morning I wondered what it would mean if we were all to view our lives from this broader perspective.
I wondered what it would look like if, instead of seeing ourselves as tied to our bodies, names, families and cities, we not only knew, but had a conscious, every moment experience of also being eternal.
I wondered how the world might function if there were a mass awareness that we are all eternal beings, choosing this body, this name, this family and this city, at this particular moment in time, and also knowing that at any moment, we might morph into something different, something other, something more.
I wondered, if each of us lived from this place, how differently we might view the world. How differently we might make decisions. How differently we might treat one another.
- How differently for example, would you treat children and young people if you saw them as eternal beings, just like you? If you saw that they were in fact just as wise and all creative as you? If you saw beyond even that; that in truth, they are you?
- Would you condescend to try to mold them into an image that makes you happy; to ask them to behave in ways that don’t embarrass you? Would you be concerned about where they ranked at school or on the sporting field if you knew that they were in truth, eternal beings, dressing up in a costume, playing a role? If you knew that they had deliberately chosen that costume and that role for this lifetime?
- How would you treat your ancestors who have passed? Would you consign them to the recesses of your mind, viewing their influence as something long past? Or would you experience their presence as alive and available in every moment, with love and guidance always on offer?
- Would you ease up on yourself perhaps? Would you stop telling your ‘poor me’ stories? Your stories about how life could be if only you had been born in a different family or city, with different educational opportunities, health or appearance?
- Would you see each moment as a precious gift? An opportunity? Something chosen rather than something imposed?
You are an eternal being.
As an eternal being, you are showing up in a specific form, within a specific space/time continuum. And still you are eternal. It’s not either/or. It’s both.
The problem is that most of us are focused on just one side of what is often presented as a duality.
When you are willing to be both eternal and individual, not as a dichotomy, but in a space which exists beyond dualism and which is comfortable with apparent contradictions, only then will you be able to:
- access the wisdom of the ages whilst simultaneously harnessing your understanding of how to download apps to your iPhone,
- make decisions about which jobs to pursue, which houses to live in and which schools to send your children to, all the while knowing that these decisions are actually minute and quite insignificant in the context of eternity.
You are an eternal and all powerful being and at the same time you are a speck of dust at a point in time, in the universe.
The ego riles at the second of those statements and sometimes it wallows in it. But when you’re ready to see the truth in the statement, you’ll see its great beauty and you’ll revel more deeply in the uniqueness of this particular life experience you’re living.
You’ll stop trying to fashion the world as you’d like it to be and instead you’ll begin appreciating the world, exactly as it is.
The caption accompanying the photo above is from spiritual master Osho who said; “To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity”. You’ve already spent much time asleep, now is the time to wake and reside in eternity.
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Photo credit: Alice Popkorn
